For about a month leading up to my move, I stopped shopping for food. I was trying to clean out the cupboards and start over fresh. It was surprisingly easy. For a long time I was fine with meat from the fridge or freezer, for a few weeks I had fresh vegetables, and I had…
Category: Personal Projects
TV Remote Alarm
We had an interesting problem at work. There’s a display in the main lobby of my building that shows the calendar of all the conference rooms and a map showing where they are in the building. It’s pretty handy for visitors and looks really slick. The problem, though, is night. There’s no point in having…
Hard Drive Surgery
A friend of mine recently had a minor emergency when a portable hard drive was knocked off a table and ceased to function. I was called in to help. Indeed, it did not work. When plugged in (and I tried on multiple computers and operating systems), it wouldn’t be able to recognize the device. Since…
French Toast Sandwich
Continuing an effort to finish off a loaf of french bread before it went stale, I decided to try to make a good breakfast. I can’t remember exactly how I ended up with the idea, but the combination worked extremely well. I took some brown sugar and honey link sausage and sliced it in half…
Erin’s Food Challenge
I recently received a pair of ingredients from Erin and was given the challenge to create an original dish with one or both ingredients, name it, and document it. The ingredients were wasabi cheddar cheese, and chili-cocoa powder. I tasted the powder and it was familiar but not extremely appealing. I tried using it as…
Going green(er)
I’ve always thought that I am pretty good about doing things in a decently Earth-friendly way. I keep my AC and heat at barely tolerable levels, I recycle, I turn off the lights when I’m not in the room, I turn off the water when I’m brushing my teeth, and I carpool when it makes…
VAST Contest 08
One of the things that sucked up a week of my evenings this summer was the VAST contest. VAST is a visualization conference, and I had decided to submit to a contest they were hosting. The premise of the contest is to use or develop tools to analyze a dataset and discover the threat. They…
Mountain Cake
Nick’s birthday was in July, and Carolyn called me to ask if I could pick up the cake for the birthday party. She hadn’t ordered one yet, so I offered to make one instead. I knew Nick loves to go camping and hiking, so I thought I’d make the cake themed around that. I wanted…
Fudge Fudge Fudge
The last few weeks I’ve been working insane hours. Some very important stuff is happening at work, and there is a lot of potential for some huge things to happen, and I’m right in the middle of it. It’s very exciting. Ten or twelve hour days most days. There was a bit of a party…
Key Lime Pie
This weekend I tried another kind of pie. I’ve been wanting to do a key lime pie for a while, and I promised the admin at work that I’d bring in something nice for her. I was having dinner at a friend’s house, too, so the pie got to pull double duty. Anyway, I used…